Return ticket
THE WAITING ROOM
Vainly you wish and vain are your desires
Ausiàs March
Is this the waiting room
for nothingness? For hell, perhaps?
Shall I never again - armchair despot that I am -
call that driver or my lame neighbour
a swine?
Shall I never again keep watch night and day
over my credit cards?
Shall I never again insert them in the slot
and achieve a modest monetary orgasm?
I have renounced this world and all its pomp,
and I'm moving in, they're carrying me, along the corridor
towards the past. What marvellous hell,
what mother of nothingness awaits me?
IF I DIE
Dido: By all that’s good, no more!
Nahum Tate
If I die, remember that what you see of me
is not what I am, however much it may remind you of that.
If I die, throw to the winds the dust
my name may raise.
When all's said and done I am the father of my children,
nothing more. But is anyone surprised that I should cry
Long live life! as long as sparks of love still fly
between us? I like to hear you laugh,
I like you in a cheerful mood.
Don't ever copy Dido! Not even Aeneas was worth it!
THE HAND STOPS
There are blows that fall in life, so heavy ... I don’t know!
César Vallejo
The hands stops, hesitates to write
these words that are medically correct.
The new and conscious terror covers me completely,
penetrates me, is the imminence of death,
always so near, always so remote,
like a court sentence ... with a possible pardon
in a surgeon’s hands. It changes me,
I change myself, become something gone in a moment:
I think of all that will no longer be, that I shall not be.
I don’t say a thing to my friends. Yes, my head is quite clear.
I want to forget everyone and not forget a soul.
NATURE IS COMING CLOSER
Lime trees, chestnuts, robins, magpies, crows,
the lethal fumes of Avonmouth, the Severn Bridge,
Abergavenny, Llanhamlach, the river Usk, the canal, sun
and clouds, the day is darkening, nature is coming closer,
is opening its tender sensual mouth. If I cease to be,
this earthy ‘I’ will swallow me lovingly down.
A LONG FAREWELL
Along the road to death I have looked for life
Ausiàs March
I think I have made a pact with destiny:
for myself I am everything, for the universe a corpuscle,
I would like those whom I have loved and love
to remember me in the embrace of a long farewell.
And life goes on.
I shall go to the operation stripped of everything
so that I can disappear or start again.
CUNNING
I keep silent.
I shall keep silent up to the last moment,
that last unpostponable moment
which is the silence that is me
which is the solitude that is me.
Then I shall have no need of cunning:
I shall find in that little lethal world
a completeness new and strange. That of the man who says:
“All I want is peace with myself
and let’s hope those close to me, who could be hurt,
do not resent it”,
and he says it in all innocence...
My cunning I bequeath to whoever wants
- as I did – to build invisible bridges.
Of course, if I get a reprieve....
THE OPERATING THEATRE
A wise doctor does not take the case lightly.
Ausiàs March
I wasn’t there
and they opened up my side.
I wasn’t there
and they cut bits out of me.
Shall I wake up some day?
Shall I see the scalpel, the solemn surgeon,
the lights, the apparatus, all those eyes?
Who asks me what I’m thinking?
I’m afraid of being there!
What luck I wasn’t!
TEMPUS FUGIT
Dolls’ faces are rosier, but these were children
Herbert Read
What has become of the children
who died in the Vietnam war?
Where are their hopes, their tender limbs
and those eyes of theirs staring at the lens?
What has become of the children
who died in the world war?
Someone – crime or punishment – blunted
their hunger and their coloured crayons.
What has become of the children
who died in the war in Spain?
Where are their toys that stopped working?
And their little sandals?
What has become of me?
What has become of you?
IT’S ALL THE SAME
In the beginning was the word.
The end is death,
which is waiting for us,
which may warn us that it’s coming,
which may come unexpectedly.
Some people contrive it.
Others connive at it.
We don’t want it.
There are some who desire it.
It’s only possible to ignore it
when we are idiots or senile.
I am trying to make a deal with it
even if I have to bring the date forward.
It’s all the same in the end.
Isn’t it?
SOLITUDE
The chief priests accused him of many things
St Mark
I walk alone through the world, always alone.
In my left side
nothing but water and blood.
The disease decreases, the wound grows larger.
We have abjured the powers of the Church,
the powers of the State.
In my left side
nothing but water and blood,
water and blood.
We walk alone through the world, always alone.
LIKE A BABY IN SWADDLING CLOTHES
It was indeed a blessing in our days
To have your kindness present in the world
Pere Serafí
They tell me I have been reborn,
they give me painkillers,
I am restricted to the basic functions
needed for survival. Miraculous hands
open and close the curtains,
wash my wounds, shake up my pillows,
keep watch over thousands of tubes
and the rhythm of my blood,
give me oxygen,
see that my buttocks never get sore,
feed me, comb my hair, tuck me up
and look at me – ah, how they look at me! –
with an age-old love
that I did not know existed,
with the love of one who is making a gift
of their own humanity
while performing a duty.
PAIN
Pain, which springs from nature itself
or perhaps from progress,
attacks us, becomes part of us
here, there, moderate, acute,
unbearable: is it man’s destiny?
Is the last moment a moment
of extreme pleasure or extreme pain?
And fear?
SISTER
Ah, sister, I will not make the great mistake
of daring to call you by your Christian name;
far be it from me to further anarchy
by offending against the strict regard for rank
which safeguards health in the city of the sick.
‘Sister’, with this most human of all titles
you mend men’s lives and treat it as routine,
always giving your love in the corners and spaces of life.
Look, though, at the Great Panjandrum in his fine fawn suit
- which suits his political future:
will he win through by counting the cash they pay you,
coin by coin,
and nibbling at the savings of the sick?
NOCTURN
A pallid light pervades the entire ward
and, here and there, you listen to coughing impromptus,
like abstract complaints to gods who ignore us,
whispers and light steps are heard:
no one is alone.
You smile, you survive,
you gently fall asleep.
Time goes by.
The pain returns,
they give you painkillers,
they give you their hand.
MY NAME
I couldn’t manage to make them
call me by my name,
not ‘Doctor’:
nothing deserves a doctorate more
than the way this sister acts and feels.
Not ‘Mr’ or ‘Señor’:
I own no slaves, no land, have no possessions.
I am just one human being among all human beings,
just one of so many lives surplus to warlords’ needs,
and you treat me as if I were an essential man
you save my life, you love me.
What more can I want?
TIME
From this time on, now that I have survived,
each second, each minute, each hour is a gift,
a succulent morsel of life.
Beforehand I prepared, went carefully over
my weakest subject,
the long panorama of my years
- free from feelings of guilt or the need for excuses,
my own or other people’s –
and repeated what is for me the cardinal rule,
perhaps mistaken, not always obeyed:
“never do harm to anyone”, remaining silent,
lying if need be, even when faced with the tunnel
from which I might or might not emerge
- Oh, Bristol pathways! fields of Wales!
the loneliest ones! Show me your beauty,
hide me!... –
but I have emerged, and now each second,
each minute, each hour is a gift:
I love those whom I loved,
some say nothing to me: only a few.
If I think of someone I can hear his reply.
AGGRESSIVENESS
I’m writing again...
Look at this paper, this pen!
No matter that I’ve lost a lung,
The longer I survive, the better advertisement I’ll be
for medical aggressiveness.
Let no one despise this medicine!
The only worrying thing is whether saving life
may lower the quality of death.
Today, though, I’m writing again
the prayer which thrills me.
NURSES
Like one who lulls by artifice
his body so that it may not suffer pain
Ausiàs March
Friend, dear friends,
is it true that it’s green, the anaesthetic they injected me with?
They make me into a thing, nothing,
they operate. I’ve woken up!
Friend, dear friends, you took me in your arms,
with all the tubes, cold and efficient, in place,
you lovingly laid me on the bed;
every hour almost, maybe every minute,
you come and see me and offer me
painkillers, water, food and warmth.
You are the generating mother of every solace,
prepared, with the strength of your lovely arms,
to cradle the infant whom, you remind me,
I still carry within myself.
All things considered, maybe I’ve been lucky.
WARD 4:FRENCH WINDOWS AT GARDEN LEVEL
My cell off Ward 4
has a French window at garden level
through which I could escape to Tierra del Fuego
- I have credit cards enough to get me there -.
And I have not escaped. I contemplate
from my bed, through the window panes,
three Scots pines, seagulls and rooks,
under a sky now blue, now grey.
I find the will to exist, make the wound mine,
and following the thread of pain, begin to hope.
I hope for everything. And you come in, my friend,
with your solicitous ways and a couple of questions:
“Was that your son, the boy who came to see you?”
“Would you like to change your position?”
I shan’t escape to Tierra del Fuego. I know you’ll come back,
and you do.
THE CHART
Hour by hour, day by day,
you come in, you who are one and are many
- as the poet from Roda would say –
you come to check my pulse,
my temperature, blood pressure, pain,
fantasies, love, fury...
You write it all down faithfully on the chart
and turn into watchfulness, patience,
conversation, smiles,
and you moisten my mouth with cotton wool
soaked in lemon juice.
Your writing, the lines you draw have more to say
than the works of clever authors
and no one’s aware of it,
and your actions penetrate to the depth of the soul
far more than the prohibitions of the Pope,
and you’re not aware of it and you wouldn’t believe it anyway.
I RANG THE BELL
It was in the night. Pain gripped my back,
breathing was hard and came in gasps.
I tried to change position, couldn’t make it.
I rang the bell.
You came in, with your blue dress and your cap,
checked all the tubes, gave me the oxygen mask...
We had to wait for the duty doctor
to come and give me the painkiller.
He was a long time coming. He was attending
to one patient after another
- there is no money to spare to lighten their work,
only enough and more for parasites - .
You stayed with me to wait for him,
with your blue dress, and your hand
which I can’t remember now, so strong and tender,
unforgettable.
MY SONS HAVE BEEN
They stand up tall, know what they want,
don’t realise if they’re being feckless,
do (but without letting on) what I tell them,
wear without modesty a halo of youth,
come one by one into my cell,
sit on the bed, the table, the chairs,
know that we grown-ups will be grown-ups,
that we have our caprices and infirmities,
and they show concern – it’s touching –
about my health. They would like to be listening now
to some pop music or a jazz concert.
They also know how to sit quietly and do things for me.
Maybe they are getting impatient, but they’re determined
to be with me and they stay with me:
despite the outlook let’s not get sentimental.
PEOPLE SUFFER
People suffer and don’t know why
Tarkovsky
Yes, man has violated nature.
Is silence the remedy for evil?
The wise eye, the heir of past wisdom, passes judgement.
We shall stay here. We shall move slowly.
Stripped of well-being
now we do know why we suffer.
The therapeutic wound stings.
Drugs, painkillers, the institution
is well organised:
I don’t complain in front of the nursing sister,
or my children, or you...
Silence is the single final remedy.
We suffer and we do know why,
neither heroes nor monsters: human, transient.
THE VISIT
You come from another world.
You bring me a little gift. We go through all the rituals
of word and deed:
“How well you’re looking!”
“You too,” I smile.
Yours is the rhythm of action,
mine the passiveness of waiting.
You programme yourself. I am programmed by others.
At the end of the day, though, we must never cease to be
the masters of ourselves,
whether you are stepping on the accelerator in the world outside
or they are injecting me, in here, with rat poison for the heart.
You leave. Full of goodwill and even sympathetic,
you love the air, the sky, you breathe in deeply.
THEY ENVY ME
And the flawless motion of the lovely body
Ausiàs March
When you come in they envy me.
The harmony of your profile and your smile
shines out. I descend the path of pain
and shorten distances. You examine the scar.
You shake your hair and show
the moistness of your eyes.
Do you realise that you are just at the start
and I on the other hand am getting ready for the final scene?
You offer me magazines, soap, peppermints,
would run all my errands.
Love is – and is not merely –
an intertwining of legs, a mingling of salivas.
I parcel up gifts of time: I offer them to you.
You smile, your profile stands out clear.
IT WILL ALL GO ON THE SAME
Whoever brands the dead as poor
says so with pain in his left side,
scratching the age-old hypocrisy
which will keep him going until he drops
on the morrow of your disappearance.
Yes, it will all go on just the same.
Don’t be angry, there’s nothing you can do about it:
count yourself lucky you won’t hear him when he says
“pobre Toni”, in Castilian.
Meanwhile, if you’re not there,
your love rolls backwards
to the beauty of the earliest word.
If you’re not there.
TESTAMENT
Friends, dear friends, if I die
do not allow destruction
and duplicity to rule.
I tried to show that love
could be lived by us all to the full:
I failed.
I tried to show that with very little
we could all live life to the full:
I failed.
I tried to show there was no need to be a criminal
in order to live a free and decent life:
they left me alone.
Do you realise? I have kept silent about many things.
If I die, friends, dear people,
there’s just one thing:
do not shut doors on one another,
stand firmly by whoever fails and keeps silent.
ON MY OWN TWO FEET
On my own two feet, walking in from the road,
I entered Frenchay hospital,
made up a parcel of time
and stuffed it into the corner cupboard.
Fear I put under my pillow.
I pulled off my mask and became anonymous.
Being superstitious, I didn’t look hope in the face
but opened my eyes wide like a halfwit.
With a shot of anaesthetic they closed them,
I have the sign here
- not from the gods, but from man –
that I did indeed live a few unrecorded hours.
It’s for this reason I would like to have closer knowledge
of the lives of my healers,
and of this male nurse who pushes the theatre trolleys...
Will they all fade away?
Bhatnagar who never looked at me,
Len who gently took blood from me
and later failed some exams,
Nicki who knew who García Márquez was,
Forrester-Wood, the healer-in-chief,
who had tasted Fundador brandy...?
On my own two feet I left.
Now I drink to the long life of this medical world,
exemplary, humane,
which often turns time into paper streamers.
Months will pass. I still remember them.
MUTILATION
Pain and fear are enough to destroy all virtues
Ausiàs March
Look at the great works of men, the inventions,
all are, have produced, produce and will produce
the mutilation of nature.
We shorten distances, we lengthen lives,
but destroy the mother, make her disintegrate,
we have multiplied ad infinitum the law that might is right.
And we go on bearing children,
stain the poisonous fog:
how many cubic feet per head?
GREETINGS, FRIENDS!
Resuscitation Training Centre
Friends, where are you?
Last night I dreamt about you. I was walking with you
down the barrack-like corridors at Frenchay.
Then we were sitting at a table and passed one another the pepper,
the ketchup and the HP sauce.
How’s your cough getting on? And the exercises?
Who brought you your morning cup of tea today?
Do they still squeak as much,
the wheels of the X-ray machine?
And the electric trolleys? Do they still
terrorise the corridors?
I can see the discreet arrivals of the paper-seller
and the flower lady and the librarian.
You must surely be hearing the firm, maternal voices
of the physiotherapists and some of the nurses,
and that whispering at night.
I believe in the resurrection of the flesh!
SUPERSTITION
We run away from life in order to run away from death
I thought I had nothing more to do in via,
all that I wanted to say in public
I had already revealed, I kept repeating,
and like a capricious god, instead of men
I was slaying woodlice
in front of thirteen luminous virgins.
I won my racing bets;
the bathrobe my mother gave me “to last a lifetime”
was worn out and I threw it away.
Then I went out and leaned over the fields
in search of shade.
Today, after an act of faith in man,
with my left side cut about
and the superstition dispelled,
I know that I shall still be stirring up trouble.
I SHALL HAVE TO PUT ON A MASK
And I used to say: let all that it has been our lot to live
be laid wide open: long live the Day of judgement!
We mustn’t hide from anything, I used to say.
Now, however, don’t ask me for what reason,
I suspect that I shall have to put on a mask,
just as we put a mask over wounds and pain.
LUNCH AT MASKREYS
Cuisine gastronomique
Today, the twentieth of February 1989
with a Mediterranean sun, a caressing breeze,
I climbed, not without effort, to lunch alone
on the top floor of Maskrey’s shop.
The delicious taste of cod with parsley sauce,
and, for dessert, a pavlova,
the view over the flat roof
and the nice people who, as if nothing was happening
- and nothing was - , were munching like me,
all convinced me that death does not exist,
how could it?
And I thought of the neglected ones who perish
and the helpless, and of those who make
a fat living out of playing at necrophilia.
STANDING ERECT
I write again the prayer of the fool:
“your spirit is the one that conquers me”,
here, standing erect,
ready for battle,
not the base military battle
which ends with honours
that hide and blot out horrors. No.
Ready, more than ever, for the battle
of life, of the ‘I’ with myself,
without the luxury of possibly flight.
Here, standing erect, an incurable optimist,
I shall defend a succession of lost causes:
universal love, an end to all discriminations,
the idea that parasites should give blood and earn their living,
that democrats should go and kill themselves,
that sensible people should abandon reason
and, instead of preaching against it, stamp out evil,
Here, standing erect, today, tomorrow, or whenever,
I, or perhaps my shadow!
And above all you!